Bring Me Their Hearts by Sara Wolf

Bring Me Their Hearts by Sara Wolf

Zera is a Heartless – the immortal, unageing soldier of a witch. Bound to the witch Nightsinger ever since she saved her from the bandits who murdered her family, Zera longs for freedom. With her heart in a jar under Nightsinger’s control, she serves the witch unquestioningly. Until Nightsinger asks Zera for a Prince’s heart in exchange for her own.

Crown Prince Lucien d’Malvane hates the royal court as much as it loves him – every tutor too afraid to correct him and every girl jockeying for a place at his side. No one can challenge him – until the arrival of Lady Zera. She’s inelegant, smart-mouthed, & out for his blood.

So begins a game of cat and mouse between a girl with nothing to lose and a boy who has it all. Winner takes the loser’s heart. Literally.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism
  • Classism
  • Persecution for witchcraft (theme)
  • Fatmisia & body shaming
  • Child abuse
  • Arranged marriage
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Alcohol abuse & alcoholism recounted
  • Graphic blood & gore depiction, including dead bodies
  • Cannibalism
  • Emesis
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a sister
  • Death of a mother & father
  • Death of a child mentioned
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Torture
  • Knife violence & stabbing
  • Explosions
  • Fire
  • Kidnapping
  • Loss of autonomy (mind control)
  • Death from a fall mentioned
  • War themes (central theme)
  • Animal death and dead bodies
  • Death by animal attack mentioned
  • Bullying
  • Poverty themes
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My Summer of Love & Misfortune by Lindsay Wong

My Summer of Love & Misfortune by Lindsay Wong

Iris Wang is having a bit of a rough start to her summer. In an attempt to snap her out of her funk, Iris’s parents send her away to visit family in Beijing, with the hopes that Iris will “reconnect with her culture” and “find herself.” Iris resents her parents’ high-handedness, but even she admits that this might be a good opportunity to hit the reset button.

Iris expects to eat a few dumplings, meet some of her family, and visit a tourist hotspot or two. What she doesn’t expect is to meet a handsome Mandarin-language tutor named Frank and to be swept up in the ridiculous, opulent world of Beijing’s wealthy elite, leading her to unexpected and extraordinary discoveries about her family, her future, and herself.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Cheating
  • Alcohol abuse
  • Drug abuse
  • Emesis
  • Car accident
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Girl Giant and the Monkey King by Van Hoang

Girl Giant & the Monkey King by Van Hoang

Eleven-year-old Thom Ngho is keeping a secret: she’s strong. Like suuuuper strong. Freakishly strong. And it’s making it impossible for her to fit in at her new middle school.

In a desperate bid to get rid of her super strength, Thom makes a deal with the Monkey King, a powerful deity and legendary trickster she accidentally released from his 500-year prison sentence. Thom agrees to help the Monkey King get back his magical staff if he’ll take away her strength.

Soon Thom is swept up in an ancient and fantastical world in where demons, dragons, and Jade princesses actually exist. But she quickly discovers that magic can’t cure everything, and dealing with the trickster god might be more trouble than it’s worth.”

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Bullying
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The Beauty That Remains by Ashley Woodfolk

The Beauty That Remains by Ashley Woodfolk

Autumn always knew exactly who she was—a talented artist and a loyal friend. Shay was defined by two things: her bond with her twin sister, Sasha, and her love of music. And Logan always turned to writing love songs when his love life was a little less than perfect.

But when tragedy strikes each of them, somehow music is no longer enough. Now Logan can’t stop watching vlogs of his dead ex-boyfriend. Shay is a music blogger struggling to keep it together. And Autumn sends messages that she knows can never be answered.

Despite the odds, one band’s music will reunite them and prove that after grief, beauty thrives in the people left behind.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Bimisia
  • Suicide recounted
  • Panic attacks
  • Substance addiction
  • Alcohol abuse
  • Recreational drug use, & drug abuse mentioned
  • Terminal cancer (leukemia)
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a best friend recounted
  • Death of a sister recounted
  • Death of an ex-boyfriend recounted
  • Car accident recounted
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Moonbreeze by Adrienne Woods

Moonbreeze by Adrienne Woods

The life of a star-studded royal has not been kind to eighteen year-old Elena Watkins. With a Council breathing down her neck and a dragon that refuses to accept her as her rider, she must convince everyone that she is ready to rule Paegeia like her parents before her. But she has made a promise to her father King Albert, that she will not go looking for him and free the people of Etan. Elena has promised to never truly fulfil her destiny.

However, situations out of her control will soon force her to confront herself and the evil that seeks to destroy her. Elena must look inside herself to discover if she can defeat the approaching darkness, be accepted by the people of Paegeia, bring her dragon back to light and fulfill the destiny written in their stars.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Graphic gang rape & rape
  • Nightmares
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Firebolt by Adrienne Woods

Firebolt by Adrienne Woods

Dragons. Right. Teenage girls don’t believe in fairy tales, and sixteen-year old Elena Watkins was no different.

Until the night a fairy tale killed her father.

Now Elena’s in a new world, and a new school. The cutest guy around may be an evil dragon, a Prince wants Elena’s heart, and a long dead sorcerer may be waking up to kill her. Oh. And the only way Elena’s going to graduate is on the back of a dragon of her own.

Teenage girls don’t believe in fairy tales. Now it’s time for Elena to believe – in herself. 

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Antiziganism (g slur)
  • Death of a father
  • Murder
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Beneath a Meth Moon by Jacqueline Woodson

Beneath a Meth Moon by Jacqueline Woodson

aurel Daneau has moved on to a new life, in a new town, but inside she’s still reeling from the loss of her beloved mother and grandmother after Hurricane Katrina washed away their home. Laurel’s new life is going well, with a new best friend, a place on the cheerleading squad and T-Boom, co-captain of the basketball team, for a boyfriend. Yet Laurel is haunted by voices and memories from her past.

When T-Boom introduces Laurel to meth, she immediately falls under its spell, loving the way it erases, even if only briefly, her past. But as she becomes alienated from her friends and family, she becomes a shell of her former self, and longs to be whole again. With help from an artist named Moses and her friend Kaylee, she’s able to begin to rewrite her story and start to move on from her addiction.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Drug addiction & drug abuse (theme)
  • Death of a mother recounted
  • Death of a grandmother recounted
  • Hurricane Katrina
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Harbor Me by Jacqueline Woodson

Harbor Me by Jacqueline Woodson

It all starts when six kids have to meet for a weekly chat—by themselves, with no adults to listen in. There, in the room they soon dub the ARTT Room (short for “A Room to Talk”), they discover it’s safe to talk about what’s bothering them—everything from Esteban’s father’s deportation and Haley’s father’s incarceration to Amari’s fears of racial profiling and Ashton’s adjustment to his changing family fortunes. When the six are together, they can express the feelings and fears they have to hide from the rest of the world. And together, they can grow braver and more ready for the rest of their lives.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Death of a parent
  • Incarceration for vehicular manslaughter
  • Deportation
  • Bullying
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Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson

Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson

As the book opens in 2001, it is the evening of sixteen-year-old Melody’s coming of age ceremony in her grandparents’ Brooklyn brownstone. Watched lovingly by her relatives and friends, making her entrance to the music of Prince, she wears a special custom-made dress. But the event is not without poignancy. Sixteen years earlier, that very dress was measured and sewn for a different wearer: Melody’s mother, for her own ceremony– a celebration that ultimately never took place.

Unfurling the history of Melody’s parents and grandparents to show how they all arrived at this moment, Woodson considers not just their ambitions and successes but also the costs, the tolls they’ve paid for striving to overcome expectations and escape the pull of history. As it explores sexual desire and identity, ambition, gentrification, education, class and status, and the life-altering facts of parenthood, Red at the Bone most strikingly looks at the ways in which young people must so often make long-lasting decisions about their lives–even before they have begun to figure out who they are and what they want to be.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Teen pregnancy
  • 9/11 & the Tulsa Massacre mentioned
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Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

BROWN GIRL DREAMING is a memoir in verse that depicts Jacqueline Woodson growing up in different places during a unique time in American history. She’s born in Ohio, to which her father’s family traces a proud lineage, but raised in the South, where she encounters the sweetness of life with grandparents as well as the sting of Jim Crow. She moves back to the North and navigates a noisier place with hard edges and warm friends. How can she reconcile her different worlds? Will she be able to find her voice, not only so she can stand out but so she can make sense of the topsy-turvy world around her?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Alcohol consumption
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